Paulette Howard-Johnston

Paulette Howard-Johnston, who has died aged 104, was one of the last surviving
connections with the belle époque era of Marcel Proust; her
father was the artist Paul César Helleu (1859-1927), who created elegant
images of the many beautiful women in international society, including
Consuelo Vanderbilt and Gladys Deacon (both Duchesses of Marlborough).

5:55PM BST 07 Aug 2009

In order to finance a mondaine lifestyle – he gave glamorous parties while his children walked about barefoot – Paul Helleu brought a succession of beautiful women to his yacht, and made drypoint prints of them. These he sold (there were 2,500 Consuelo Vanderbilts). Though he normally sketched women, he left a memorable image of Proust on his deathbed, and of the poet and aesthete Robert de Montesquiou, who wrote an elegiac biography of Helleu.

A sculpture of Paulette by Paul Troubetzkoy, c. 1925

Paulette's mother was Alice Guerin, who came to be painted in 1884 at the age of 14, as a result of which Helleu fell in love with her. They married on July 28 1886, when she was just 16.

The character of Elstir in Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu was largely based on Helleu, and the author frequently visited the Helleus at their apartment in the rue Émile-Menier, or on their yacht at Deauville. Whereas the novelist was shy and tended to remain silent when in large groups, he was loquacious when at ease in small company.

Paulette remembered an evening in 1918 or 1919 when Proust brought her mother flowers. She had been allowed to stay up late, and at around 11pm a chauffeur arrived with a bouquet of flowers so enormous that he was invisible behind it. He asked the Helleus if M Proust, who was waiting downstairs, could come up and visit them.

A few moments later Proust appeared, wearing a heavy overcoat despite the heat of a Paris summer night. Paulette observed the darkness of his hair, in contrast to the pallor of his face, and how he greeted her father with the words: "Bonjour, Monsieur Elstir." But in later life, she was disdainful about him: "Oh, Proust! We thought nothing of him. He was a little man sitting in the corner."

Paulette Helleu was born in August 1904, and was a childhood friend of Diana Mitford, later Lady Mosley, who recalled: "Unlike her father, she was very critical and frank; she thought my clothes awful, which they were, particularly compared with hers, and she contradicted everything I chose to say. Nevertheless I was very fond of her; her attitude towards me was no more unflattering than my sisters', and I was perfectly accustomed to snubs."

Life in the Helleu household was far from relaxed. Paulette adored her mother, but enjoyed no intimacy with her father; he did, however, teach her to paint, and she was to become fiercely protective of his artistic reputation. He insisted that it was more important for a girl to be beautiful than to pass exams, but Paulette nevertheless read well and learnt English by the age of six; by the age of 14 she was more or less running the family home.

Paul had a terrible temper, and his daughter was terrified of him. He once threw a leg of mutton out of the window because it was overcooked; and when he caught the family nanny playing the piano on board his yacht (on which the family spent half the year), he ordered that it be thrown overboard.

Paulette's first grown-up lunch was attended by the politician, writer and wit Count Boni de Castellane. In 1924 she accompanied her father on a visit to Claude Monet at Giverny, in the company of the painter and art historian Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, who was writing a book about Edouard Manet. The young Paulette was fascinated by Monet, noting how small he was; his thick neck; his long and completely white beard. She found him simple and straightforward, with an air of rusticity which disappeared the moment he spoke.

Monet advised Paulette always to paint naturally "sur le motif" and to copy what she saw. He told her: "You paint like a bird sings." Allowed to explore the house, in his bedroom she counted four Manets and 11 Cézannes.

She met the artist Giovanni Boldini, and was amazed that he could create such delicate images with such fat fingers. He used to sing to her, and she was aware of his lasciviousness, and of his gaffes. He once asked a young lady at a lunch: "Who is that old pinguoin over there?" – to be told that it was her husband.

Robert de Montesquiou was also in evidence. Paulette recalled that he had bad teeth, which he never showed, spoke in a high-pitched voice like a peahen, tended to wear grey and adored her mother.

Paulette decided not to marry in her mother's lifetime. She enjoyed a full social life, invariably dressed by Balenciaga, and turned down numerous proposals of marriage. She was a fine horsewoman.

In 1955 she became the third wife of Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore "Johnny" Howard-Johnston, CB, DSO, DSC, who had recently served as Chief of Staff to Flag Officer, Central Europe. He was one of the Royal Navy's foremost exponents of anti-submarine warfare and until his death in 1996 maintained old-fashioned good manners and style.

They lived partly in Paris, and for a time in Dolphin Square in London. They then settled in a villa Paulette designed near Biarritz, where she loved to play golf. The admiral himself designed a superb water garden on a plot of land nearby, later presented by Paulette to the municipality of Biarritz. In later life Paulette Howard-Johnston relied heavily on her friendship with the designer Karl Lagerfeld, with whom she was in constant touch.

Having devoted much of her life to promoting her father's work – and aware that she was almost certainly the last survivor from that world – in 2001 she established the Association des Amis de Paul-César Helleu to continue this mission and complete the catalogue raisonné of her father's pictures.

Paulette Howard-Johnston, who died on June 12, was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d' honneur and an Officier des Arts et des Lettres.